Scalability for Voice and Video Systems

Voice conferencing can scale to 2000 ports in a single system using modular Hardware Media Servers for redundancy and DSP mixing for voice and video.

Video conferencing scales up to 650 video ports in a single system using an Express Media Server and supports a wide variety of endpoints from Cisco Unified video telephony to H.323/H.320 and SIP endpoints from third-party providers.

New Components in Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 8.0

Express Media Server

All systems that will use audio or video need a media server and the media server can be either an Express Media Server or a Hardware Media Server.

The Express Media Server, new in this release of Cisco Unified MeetingPlace, is a set of software modules, including an audio mixer and a video switcher, that resides on the Application Server. The Express Media Server creates a single box, software-only solution for Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. The Express Media Server is based on the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Express Video Telephony (VT) product.

Voice Quality Information for the Express Media Server

Echo cancellation—No line or acoustic echo cancellation is applied to incoming voice streams. Therefore, you should enable echo cancellation in the gateways for the PSTN lines.

Packet loss concealment (PLC)—PLC is not available for G.722, so occasional audio degradation may be heard on G.722 audio streams which undergo packet loss. If you cannot fix or tolerate the packet loss issues on those audio streams, then switch to a different codec, such as G.711.

Jitter handling—The Express Media Server has a 160-millisecond jitter buffer. Our tests show that packet delay variation greater than 80 milliseconds results in dropped packets. We recommend that you minimize the jitter in your network, especially for the audio streams that come in to Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. For example, implement the appropriate quality of service (QoS) policies with Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) markings.

Automatic gain control (AGC)—AGC is not available on the Express Media Server. In a meeting, users can use the telephone user interface (TUI) to raise and lower the volume of their own voices:

Press #82 to increase the volume at which other participants hear you.

Press #83 to decrease the volume at which other participants hear you.

Cisco WebEx Node for MCS

The Cisco WebEx Node for MCS hosts the Cisco WebEx meeting room on-premise and is responsible for connecting to the Cisco WebEx site via an SSL gateway, hosting the meeting room, accepting client connections, outdialing, and recording the meeting.

The Cisco WebEx Node for MCS does the following:

Receives meeting data from meeting presenters and distributes the data to the other meeting participants.

Sends realtime status messages to the Webex Node Management system for realtime and historical reports on Webex Node activites.

Multiple Cisco WebEx Nodes may be provisioned to increase capacity and provide for redundancy:

Provisioning is in Cisco WebEx site and nodes themselves, transparent to Cisco Unified MeetingPlace server.

Multiple nodes in same meeting will automatically cascade.

Single set of Cisco WebEx nodes may be shared between internal and external meetings.

Only External Meetings can overflow to the WebEx Collaboration cloud. Meeting Center meetings can be scheduled as external by the schedulers, Event Center and Training Center can only be external meeting type.

Internal Meeting Center Meetings are decided when scheduling a meeting and there is no data sharing or automatic overflow to the WebEx Collaboration cloud.

Your system can have up to 3 Cisco WebEx Node for MCS servers deployed anywhere behind the enterprise firewalls for internal network users only when joining WebEx web meetings.

Applicable to Meetings scheduled as "Internal"

If users schedule a Meeting Center WebEx meeting as an "internal" meeting type, then all invitees must be on Enterprise network internal PCs (VPN or on network), in order to join this meeting type. No one outside that Enterprise is able to join. An internal meeting does not send any shared content to the WebEx Collaboration cloud but it does send status information to the WebEx Node Management system only. Because the Internal meeting type does not have a data sharing link to the WebEx Collaboration cloud, internal meetings cannot be recorded or WebEx HQ Video webcam mixing cannot be seen (all WebEx webcam video traffic is mixed in the WebEx Collaboration cloud only).

When an Enterprise network user (either directly on the network or on VPN into the network) clicks on a URL to join a meeting, the first browser window joins to the WebEx Site and receives a list of WebEx Nodes only for an "internal" meeting. The WebEx client does a ping to all the WebEx Nodes deployed internally behind the company firewalls only. The WebEx client picks the meeting server based on the ping response Round Trip Time (RTT) between the client and the type of the server which is classified as “node”, and joins the shortest ping response RTT. Internal meetings automatically overflow to other Webex Nodes deployed in the network, so redundant Webex Nodes are highly recommended for resiliency for internal web meetings. Internal meetings are not allowed to overflow to the Webex Collaboration cloud like "external" meetings.

Applicable to Meetings scheduled as “External”

When an Enterprise network user (either directly on the network or on VPN into tbe network) clicks on a URL to join a meeting, the first browser window joins to the WebEx site and receives a list of WebEx Nodes and cloud servers. The WebEx client does a ping to all resources. The WebEx client picks the meeting server based on the ping response Round Trip Time (RTT) between the client and the type of the server which is classified as “node” or “DC”. DC is the WebEx Collaboration Cloud. If RTT to the node is less than 50 ms, then it will use the WebEx node with the fastest ping response. Otherwise, if RTT to the node and RTT to DC is the same, then the WebEx Node has higher priority than the “DC” servers in the cloud, and the client browser is directed to the WebEx Node on premise. If multiple WebEx Nodes are deployed on premise, then the client to server RTT that is the fastest ping response will connect to that particular node. WebEx Global Distributed Meetings are utilized on the WebEx Node and in the WebEx Collaboration Cloud meetings, from anywhere in the world, to join all meeting attendees in the same meeting together.

The Cisco WebEx Node for MCS does not support proxy configuration. Therefore, you must place it in a network that has outbound access to the Cisco WebEx site, but that is also accessible by all internal clients that will be using it.

About Failover When Using the Cisco WebEx Node for MCS

If the Cisco WebEx Node for MCS that is hosting a meeting becomes unavailable, the next available Cisco WebEx Node for MCS automatically takes over. Any sharing and recordings will be stopped, and users will have to restart sharing and recording the meetings.

Automatic failover for the Cisco WebEx Node for MCS only applies to internal meetings in systems that have at least two Cisco WebEx Nodes installed. For external meetings, failover is handled by the Cisco WebEx collaboration cloud.

Directory Services

In Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 5.x and 6.x, there was a component called MeetingPlace Directory Services (MPDS). This component was used to synchronize your directory server information with your Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 5.x or 6.x system profiles. With Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Directory Services, you could easily integrate the information that is stored on your corporate directory server with your Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 5.x or 6.x system. By using LDAP technology, Directory Services creates an all-inclusive meta-directory that combines and synchronizes Active Directory or Netscape/SunOne/iPlanet directory information with Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 5.x or 6.x system information.

Directory Service

In Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 7 and Release 8, there is a new feature called Directory Service (note that the word service has no s at the end). This feature is not the same as the MeetingPlace Directory Services (MPDS) component that was used in Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Release 5.x and Release 6.x.

Directory Service enables the system to populate and synchronize the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace user database with the Cisco Unified Communications Manager user database, which is typically integrated with an LDAP directory.

Specifically, Directory Service simplifies user profile administration in these ways:

Note: SSL for the Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Application Server is not required to support Secure LDAP integration. You must, however, make sure that the configured AXL URL begins with "https" instead of "http."

Deleting Cisco Unified MeetingPlace user profiles does NOT delete or deactivate the corresponding user accounts on the Cisco WebEx site.